Exoteric and Esoteric Christianity

A Lecture given
by Rudolf Steiner
Dornach, April 2nd 1922
GA 211

Exoteric Christianity is to be found in the Gospels and as they have
been interpreted through history; esoteric, inner Christianity is the
living teaching of the Risen Christ: resurrection. Today it lies in the
resurrection of thinking: how dead thoughts can be awakened to life in
the form of moral impulses.

The story of the
evolution of humanity is preserved in ancient records mostly
either of a religious of philosophical character. But it must be
emphasised that as well as these records which have had a deep
and good influence upon mankind through the ages, there exists
what we may call esoteric knowledge.

Wherever the
deeper aspects of human knowledge and human thought have been
studied, a distinction has always been made between exoteric
teaching (concerned with the more external side of things) and
esoteric teaching which is accessible only to those who have
undergone the necessary inner preparation. And so in the case of
Christianity itself, especially in respect of the spiritual
kernel of Christianity — the Mystery of Golgotha — a
distinction must also be made between exoteric and esoteric
knowledge. The exoteric teaching is contained in the Gospels and
is there for all the world; but side by side with this exoteric
teaching there has always been an esoteric Christianity,
available to those who have prepared their minds and hearts to
receive it.

In this esoteric
Christianity the teaching of greatest moment is that concerning
the communion between the Risen Christ — the Christ Who has
passed through death — and those of His disciples who were
able to understand Him. The Gospels, as you know, make only brief
references to this. What the Gospels say of this communion
between Christ after His Resurrection and His disciples does
indeed enable them to surmise that something of the deepest
import to earthly evolution came to pass through the
Resurrection; but unless the step is taken into the realm of
esoteric teaching, the words can be little more than
indications.

The avowal of
Paul, of course, is of the greatest importance, for Paul
testifies that he was only able to believe in Christ after He had
appeared to him at Damascus. Paul knew then, with absolute
conviction: Christ had passed through death and in His life now,
after death, is united with earthly evolution. We must reflect
upon the significance of the testimony which came from Paul when,
through the event at Damascus, the reality of the Living Christ
was revealed to him.

Why was it that
before the vision at Damascus Paul or Saul as he then was —
could not be convinced of the reality of the Christ?

We must understand
what it meant to Paul — who to a certain extent had been
initiated into the secret doctrines of the Hebrews — to
learn that Christ Jesus had been condemned to a death of shame by
crucifixion. It was, at first, impossible for Paul to conceive
that the old prophecies could have been fulfilled by one who had
been condemned by human law to this shameful death. Until the
revelation came to him at Damascus, the fact that Jesus of
Nazareth had suffered the shame of crucifixion was for Paul
conclusive proof that He could not have been the Messiah. It was
only after the revelation at Damascus that conviction came
to Paul concerning the Mystery of Golgotha, notwithstanding the
fact that Jesus of Nazareth, or rather, the Being indwelling the
body of Jesus of Nazareth, had experienced a death of shame on
the Cross.

It was of
immeasurable significance that Paul should have proclaimed his
conviction of the truth of the Mystery of Golgotha. Traditions
that were still extant during the first centuries of Christendom
are, of course, no longer available. At most they have survived
in the form of fragments in the possession of a few isolated
secret societies, where they are not understood. Anything that
goes beyond the very sparse traditions concerning Christ after
the Mystery of Golgotha must be rediscovered to-day through
anthroposophical Spiritual Science. We have again to discover how
Christ spoke after the Resurrection. What was the nature of the
teaching given by Him to those disciples with whom He was in
communion but of whom the Gospels make no mention? The Gospel
story concerning the disciples who met Christ on the way to
Emmaus, or concerning the host of disciples, has always been
clothed in a form of tradition adapted for naive and simple minds
incapable of understanding the esoteric truths. Going further, we
must ask: What was the teaching given by Christ after the
Resurrection to his initiated disciples? Before we can begin to
understand this, we must think of the nature of the human soul as
it was in very ancient times and of the change brought about by
the Mystery of Golgotha.

A most important
truth concerning the earliest periods in the evolution of earthly
humanity and one which it is exceeding difficult for the modern
mind to understand, is that the first human beings who lived on
the Earth had no knowledge or science in the form familiar to us
to-day. Because of their faculties of atavistic clairvoyance,
these early men were able to receive the wisdom of the Gods. This
means that it was actually possible for humanity to be taught by
Divine Beings who descended spiritually to the Earth from the
realm of the higher Hierarchies and who then imparted spiritual
teaching to the souls of men. Those who received such teaching
— for the most part they were men who had been initiated in
the Mysteries — were able, through their Initiation, to
live in a state of remoteness from earthly affairs; the soul
lived to a great extent outside the body. In this state of
consciousness men were not dependent upon oral conversation or
instruction; they were able to receive communications from the
Gods in a spiritual way. Nor did they receive these teachings in
a condition of consciousness resembling dream-life as we know it
to-day. They entered into living, spiritual communion with Divine
Beings, receiving the wisdom imparted by these Beings. This
wisdom consisted of teachings given by the Gods to man in regard
to the sojourn of the human soul in the Divine-Spiritual world
before the descent into an earthly body. The experiences of the
soul before descent into a physical body through conception
— such was the substance of the teaching imparted to human
beings in the state of consciousness I have described. And the
feeling arose in these men that they were only being
reminded of something. As they received the teachings of
the Gods they felt that they were being reminded of what they
themselves had experienced before birth, or rather, before
conception, the world of soul-and-spirit.

In Plato's
writings there are still echoes of these things. And so to-day we
can look back to a Divine-Spiritual wisdom once received by men
on the Earth from the Gods themselves.

This wisdom was of
a very special character. Strange as it will seem to you to-day,
the earliest dwellers on the Earth knew nothing of death —
just as a child knows nothing of death. Those men who received
the teachings of the Gods and who then passed them on to others
also possessing the faculty of atavistic clairvoyance —
such men knew quite consciously that their souls had come down
from Divine-Spiritual worlds, had entered into physical bodies
and would in time pass out of these bodies. They regarded this as
the onward flow of the life of soul-and-spirit. Birth and death
seemed to them to be a metamorphoses, not a beginning and
end.

Speaking
figuratively, we should say: In those times man saw how the human
soul can develop onwards and he felt that earthly life was only a
section of the onflowing stream of the life of soul-and-spirit.
Two given points within this stream were not regarded as any kind
of beginning or end. It is, of course, true that man saw other
human beings around him, die. You will not accuse me of comparing
these early men with animals, for although their outward
appearance was not entirely dissimilar from that of animals, the
soul-and-spirit within them was on a very much loftier level.
— I have spoken of this many times — As little as an
animal to-day understands death when it sees another animal lying
dead, as little did the men of those early times understand
death, for they could only conceive of an onflowing stream of
soul-and-spirit. Death belonged to Maya, to the great Illusion,
and made no particular impression on them. They knew life and
life only — not death, although it was there before their
eyes. In their life of soul-and-spirit they were not involved in
death. They saw human life only from within, stretching beyond
death into the spiritual world. Birth and death were of no
significance to life. They knew only life; they did not know
death.

Little by little,
men emerged from this state of consciousness. Following the
evolution and progress of humanity from the earliest epochs to
about the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, we may say: men were
learning more and more to know the reality of death. Death was
something that made an impression upon them. Their souls became
entangled with death, and a question arose within them: What
becomes of the soul when the human being passes though
death?

In the very
earliest times, men were not faced with the question of death as
an ending. At most they enquired about the nature of the change
that took place. They asked: Is it the breath that goes out of a
man and then streams onwards, bearing the soul to Eternity? Or
they formed some other picture of the life of soul-and-spirit in
its onward flow. They pondered about this but never about death
as an ending.

It was only when
the epoch of the Mystery of Golgotha drew near that men began,
for the first time, to feel that there is a significance in
death, that earthly life has indeed an ending. Naturally, this
question was not formulated in philosophical or scientific terms;
it was more like a feeling, a perceptive experience — an
experience necessary in earthly life because reason and intellect
were to become an essential part of human evolution. Intellect,
however, is dependent upon the fact that the human being can
die.

It was necessary,
then, for the human being to be involved in death, to know death.
The ancient epochs, when men knew nothing of death, were all
unintellectual. Ideas were inspired from the spiritual world, not
‘thought out.’ There was no intellect as we know it.
But intellect had to take root and this is possible only because
the human being can die, only because he has within him
perpetually the forces of death. In a physical sense we may say:
Death can only set in when certain salts, that is to say, certain
dead, mineral substances deposit themselves in the brain as well
as in the other parts of the human organism. In the brain there
is a constant tendency towards the depositing of salts, towards a
process of bone-formation that has been arrested before
completion. So that all the time the brain has the tendency
towards death.

Humanity had,
however, to be impregnated with death. Outer acquaintance with
death, realisation that death plays an important part in human
existence, was simply a consequence of this necessity. If human
beings had remained as they were in ancient times when they had
no real knowledge of death, they would never have been able to
develop intellect — for intellect is only possible in a
world where death holds sway.

So it is when
viewed from the standpoint of the human world. But the matter may
also be viewed from the side of the higher Hierarchies, and
presented in the following way. —

The Beings of the
higher Hierarchies have within them the forces which fashioned
Saturn, Sun and Moon
[The three earlier embodiments of the Earth. See:
An Outline of Occult Science.]
and finally the Earth. If the higher Hierarchies had, as it were,
been holding council among themselves before the Mystery of
Golgotha had taken place on Earth, they would have said:
“We have been able to build up the Earth from Saturn, Sun
and Moon. But if the Earth were to contain only what we
have been able to incorporate from Saturn, Sun and Moon, no
beings could develop who, knowing death, are able to unfold
intellect. We, the higher Hierarchies, are unable to bring forth
an Earth from the Moon embodiment — an Earth on which men
know nothing of death and therefore cannot unfold the faculty of
intellect. We, the Hierarchies, cannot so fashion the Earth that
it will produce the forces necessary for the development of
intellect in man. For this purpose we must allow another Being to
enter, a Being whose path of development has been different from
ours. Ahriman is a Being who does not belong to our
hierarchy. He enters the stream of evolution by a different path.
If we tolerate Ahriman, if we allow him to participate in the
process of the Earth's evolution, he will bring death, and
with death, intellect; the seeds of death and of intellect will
then be implanted in the being of man ... Ahriman is acquainted
with death; he is interwoven with the Earth, because his paths
have connected him with earthly evolution. Ahriman is a knower of
death; therefore he is also the Ruler of
intellect.”

The Gods were
obliged — if such a word is permissible — to enter
into dealings with Ahriman, realising that without Ahriman there
could be no progress in evolution. But — so said the Gods
— if Ahriman is received into the stream of evolution to
become the Ruler of death and therewith also of the intellect,
the Earth will fall away from us; Ahriman, whose only interest is
to intellectualise the whole Earth, will demand the Earth for
himself.

The Gods were
confronted with this dilemma that their dominion over the Earth
might be usurped by Ahriman. There remained only one possibility,
namely, that the Gods themselves should acquire knowledge of
something inaccessible to them in their own worlds — worlds
untouched by Ahriman; that they, the Gods, should learn of death
as it takes place on Earth through One sent by them, through the
Christ. It was necessary for a God to die upon the Earth,
moreover for that death to be the result of the erring ways of
men and not the decree of Divine wisdom. Human error would take
root if Ahriman alone held sway. It was necessary for a God to
pass though death and to be victorious over death.

The Mystery of
Golgotha signified for the Gods an enrichment of wisdom, an
enrichment gained from the experience of death. If no Divine
Being had passed through death, the Earth would have been wholly
intellectualised without ever entering into the evolution
originally ordained for it by the Gods.

In very ancient
times men had no knowledge of death. But at some point it was
necessary for them to face the realisation: death, and intellect
together with death, brings us into a stream of evolution quite
other than that from which we have proceeded.

To His initiated
disciples Christ taught that He had come from a world wherein
there was no knowledge of death; that He had suffered death upon
the Earth and had gained the victory over death.

When this
connection of the earthly world with the Divine world is
understood, intellect can be led back to spirituality. Such,
approximately, was the substance of the esoteric teaching given
by the Risen Christ to His initiated disciples: it was a teaching
concerning death — death as seen from the arena of the
Divine world.

To have insight
into the depths of this esoteric teaching, we must realise that
the following is known to one who understands the whole sweep of
the evolution of mankind. — The Gods have gained the
victory over Ahriman inasmuch as they have made his forces useful
to the Earth but have also blunted his power in that they
themselves acquired knowledge of death through the Christ. The
Gods indeed allowed Ahriman to become part of earthly evolution
but in that they have made use of him, they have prevented him
from maintaining his dominion to the end.

Those who have
knowledge of Ahriman as he has been since the Mystery of
Golgotha and as he was before that Event, realise that he
waits for the moment when he can invade, not only the
unconscious, subconscious regions of man's life —
which as you know from the book
Occult Science,
have been open to Ahriman's influence since the time of Atlantis
— but also the spheres of man's consciousness.
Using words of human language to describe the will of a God, it
may be said: Ahriman has waited eagerly for the opportunity to
carry his influence into the conscious life of man. It was
an astonishment to him that he had not previously known of the
resolution of the Gods to send the Christ down to the Earth
— the Divine Being who passed through death. Ahriman was
not thereby deprived of the possibility of intervention, but the
edge of his power was broken.

Since then,
Ahriman seizes every opportunity of confining man to the
operations of the intellect alone. Nor has he yet relinquished
the hope that he will succeed.

What would this
mean? If Ahriman were to succeed in imbuing man with the
conviction — to the exclusion of all others — that he
can only exist in a physical body, that as a being of
soul-and-spirit he is inseparable from his body, then the human
soul would be so possessed by the idea of death that Ahriman
could easily fulfil his aims. This is Ahriman's constant
hope. And it may be said that from the forties to the end of the
nineteenth century, his heart rejoiced — although to speak
of a ‘heart’ in the case of Ahriman is merely a
figure of speech — for in the rampant materialism of that
period he might well hope for the establishment of his rulership
on Earth. (Please remember that I am using expressions of
ordinary language here, although for such themes others should
really be found). — A measure of success in this direction
was indeed indicated by the fact that during the nineteenth
century, Theology itself became materialistic. I have already
said that Theology has become ‘unchristian,’
mentioning that Overbeck, a theologian living in Basle, has
written a book in which he has tried to prove that modern
Theology can no longer truly be called Christian. In this domain,
too, there was reason for Ahriman's hopes to
rise.

Opposition to
Ahriman really exists to-day only in such teachings as are
contained in Anthroposophy. When, through Anthroposophy, man once
again realises that the soul and the Spirit are independent of
the bodily nature, then Ahriman must begin to abandon hope. Once
again, the battle waged by Christ against Ahriman is possible. An
indication is contained in the Gospel story of the Temptation,
but these things can only fully be understood when it is realised
that the more important rôle in ancient times was played by
Lucifer and that Ahriman has only acquired the influence upon
human consciousness since the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. He
had of course an influence upon humanity before then but not,
properly speaking, upon human consciousness.

Looking deeply
into the human heart, we can only say: The most important point
in the evolution of earthly humanity is that at which man learns
to know that there is a power in the Christ Impulse through
which, if he makes it his own, he can overcome the forces of
death within him.

And so the
Hierarchies belonging to Saturn, Sun, Moon and Earth drew Ahriman
into Earth-evolution but restricted his claims for domination in
that his forces were used to serve the purposes of evolution. In
a sense, Ahriman was forced into the stream of Earth-evolution.
Without him the Gods would not have been able to introduce
intellectuality into humanity, but if the edge of his dominion
had not been broken by the Deed of Christ, Ahriman would have
intellectualised the whole Earth inwardly and materialised it
outwardly. The Mystery of Golgotha is to be regarded not merely
as an inner, mystical experience, but as an external event which
must not, however, be presented in the same light as other events
recorded in history. The Ahrimanic impulse entered into earthly
evolution and at the same time — in a certain sense —
was overcome.

And so, as a
result of the Mystery of Golgotha, we have to think of a war
between Gods, and this also formed part of the esoteric teachings
communicated by Christ to His initiated pupils after the
Resurrection. In describing this early, esoteric Christianity it
must be recalled that in ancient times human beings were aware of
their connection with the Divine worlds, with the worlds of the
Gods. They knew of these worlds through revelations. But
concerning death they could receive no communication, because in
the worlds of the Gods there was no death. Moreover for human
beings themselves there was no death in the real sense, for they
knew only of the onward-flowing life of soul-and-spirit as
revealed to them in the sacred institutions of the Mysteries.
Gradually, however, the significance of death began to dawn upon
human consciousness. It was possible for men to acquire the
strength to wait for Christ Who was the victor over death.
— Such is the inner aspect of the process of
evolution.

The substance of
the esoteric teachings given by Christ to His initiated disciples
was that in what came to pass on Golgotha, super-earthly
happenings were reflected, namely, the relationships between the
worlds of the Gods belonging to Saturn, Sun, Moon and Earth as
they had been hitherto, and Ahriman. The purport of this esoteric
Christianity was that the Cross on Golgotha must not be regarded
as an expression of earthly conditions but is of significance for
the whole Cosmos.

A picture may help
us to feel our way into the substance of this esoteric
Christianity. — Suppose that two of Christ's
disciples, absorbing more and more of the esoteric teaching and
finding all doubt vanishing, were talking together. The one might
have spoken to the other as follows. — Christ our Teacher
has come down from those worlds of which the ancient wisdom tells.
Men knew the Gods but those Gods could not speak of death. If we
had remained at that stage, we could never have known anything of
the nature of death. The Gods had perforce to send a Divine Being
down to the Earth, in order that through one of themselves they
might learn the nature of death. The deed which the Gods were
obliged to perform in order to lead earthly evolution it its
fulfilment — of this we are being taught by Christ after
His resurrection. If we cleave to Him we learn of many things
hitherto unknown to man. We are being taught of deeds performed
by the Gods behind the scenes of world-existence in order truly
to further evolution on the Earth. We are taught that the Gods
have introduced the forces of Ahriman but by turning these forces
to the service of man have averted his destruction.
...

The esoteric
teaching given by the Risen Christ to His initiated pupils was
deeply and profoundly moving. Such pupils might also have said:
Interwoven as we now are with death, we should know nothing
whatever of the Gods if Christ had not died, and now, since His
Resurrection, is telling us how the Gods have come to experience
death. We should have passed over into an age when all knowledge
of the Gods would have vanished. The Gods have looked for a way
by which means they could speak to us again. And this way was
through the Mystery of Golgotha ...

The great
realisation which came to the disciples from this esoteric
Christianity was that men have again drawn near to the Divine
worlds after having departed from them. In the early days of
Christendom the disciples and pupils were permeated through and
through with this teaching. And many a man of whom history gives
only sparse and superficial particulars was the bearer of
knowledge that could only be his because he had either received
teaching himself from the Risen Christ or had been in contact
with others who had received it. — So it was in the
earliest days of the Christian era.

As time went on,
all this became externalised — externalised in the sense
that the earliest messengers of Christianity attached great
importance to being able to say they their own teacher had
himself been a pupil of a pupil of one of the Apostles. And so it
went on. A teacher had men one who had come into personal contact
with an Apostle — with one, therefore, who had known the
Lord Himself after the Resurrection.

In those earlier
centuries, weight was still attached to this living continuity,
but in the form in which the tradition came down to a later
humanity, it was already externalised, presented as bald,
historical data. In essence, however, the tradition leads back to
what I have just described. The inculcation of intellectualism
— a process which really began about the fourth or fifth
century after the Mystery of Golgotha and received its great
impulse in the fifteenth century, at the dawn of the Fifth
Post-Atlantean epoch — this evolution of intellect entailed
the loss of the old wisdom whereby these things could be
understood, and the new form of wisdom was still undeveloped. For
centuries the essence and substance of esoteric Christianity was,
as it were, forgotten by mankind.

As I have said,
fragments exist in certain secret societies whose members, at any
rate in modern times, do not understand to what they refer. In
reality, such fragments refer to teachings imparted by the Risen
Christ to certain of His initiated pupils.

Assume for a
moment that there had been no regeneration of the old Hebrew
doctrine through Christianity. In that case the conviction held
so firmly by Paul before his vision at Damascus would have become
universal. Paul was acquainted with the ancient Hebraic doctrine.
In its original form it had been Divine revelation, received
spiritually by men in very ancient times, and it was then
preserved as Holy Writ. Among the Hebrews there were learnéd
scribes who knew from this Holy Writ what was still preserved of
the old Divine wisdom. From these scribes came the judgment by
which Christ Jesus was condemned to death. And so the mind of a
man like Paul, while he was still Saul, turned to the ancient
Divine wisdom preserved by the learnéd scribes of his day
who well knew all that it signified to men. Paul said to himself:
The scribes are men of eminence, of great learning; judgment
derived on their authority from the Divine wisdom could only be
lawful judgment. An innocent man condemned to be crucified ... it
is impossible, utterly impossible in all the circumstances
leading to the condemnation of Christ Jesus! Such was the
attitude of Paul.

It was only the
Roman Governor, Pontius Pilate, influenced instinctively as he
was by an altogether different mentality, who could speak the
momentous word: ‘What is Truth?’ While Paul was Saul,
it was impossible even to imagine that there might be no truth in
the execution of a lawful judgment. The hard-won conviction which
was to arise in Paul was that truth once proceeding from the Gods
could become error among men, that truth had been turned by men
into such flagrant error that One in Whom there was no guilt at
all had been crucified.

Saul could have no
other thought than that the primeval wisdom of the Gods was
contained in the wisdom of the Hebrew scribes living at the time
of the Mystery of Golgotha. In such wisdom there could only be
truth ... . While Paul was still Saul, he argued that if indeed
it were Christ, the Messiah, Who suffered death by crucifixion,
gross error must have entered into the flow of his primeval
wisdom; for only error could have brought about the death of
Christ on the Cross. Divine truth must therefore have become
error among men.

Naturally, Saul
could only be convinced by the fact itself. Christ Himself and He
alone could convince him, when He appeared to him at Damascus.
What did this signify for Saul? It signified that the judgment
had not been derived from the wisdom of the Gods but that the
forces of Ahriman had found entrance. And so there came to Paul
the realisation that the evolution of humanity had fallen into
the grip of a foe and that his foe is the source of error on the
Earth.

In that his foe
brings the intellect to man, he also brings the possibility of
error which, in its most extreme form, becomes the error
responsible for the crucifixion of One Who was without sin. The
conviction that the guiltless One could be brought to the Cross
had to arise before it was possible for men to understand the
path by which Ahriman entered the stream of evolution and to
realise that the Mystery of Golgotha is a super-sensible,
super-earthly event in the process of the development of the
‘I,’ the Ego, within the human being.

Esotericism is by
no means identical with simple forms of mysticism. To argue that
mysticism and esotericism are one and the same denotes gross
misunderstanding. Esotericism is always a recognition of facts in
the spiritual world, facts which lie behind the veil of matter.
And it is behind the veil of matter that the balance has been
established between the Divine world and the realm of Ahriman
— established by the death of Christ Jesus on the
Cross.

Only into a world
where the being of man is laid hold of by the Ahrimanic powers
can error enter in such magnitude as to lead to the Crucifixion
— such was the thought arising in the mind of Paul. And
now, having been seized by this conviction, recognition of the
truth of esoteric Christianity came to him for the first
time.

In this sense,
Paul was truly an Initiate. But under the influence of
intellectualism this Initiation-knowledge gradually faded away
and we need to-day to acquire again a knowledge of esoteric
Christianity, to realise that there is more in Christianity than
the exoteric truths of which the Gospels do indeed awaken
perception. Esoteric Christianity is seldom spoken of in our
times. But humanity must find its way back to that of which there
is practically no documentary evidence and which must be reached
through anthroposophical Spiritual Science, namely, the teachings
given by Christ Himself after the Resurrection to His initiated
disciples — teaching that He could only give after passing
through an experience which he could not have undergone in the
world of the Gods; for until the time of the Mystery of Golgotha
there was no death in the Divine worlds. Until then, no Divine
Being had passed through death. Christ is the First-Born,
He Who passed through death, having come from the realm of the
Hierarchies of Saturn, Sun and Moon who are interwoven with
Earth-evolution.

The absorption of
death into life — that is the secret of Golgotha.
Previously, men had known life — life without death. Now
they learned to know death as a constituent of life, as an
experience which gives strength to life. The sense of life was
feebler in times when humanity had no real knowledge of death;
there must be inner strength and robustness in life if men are to
pass through death and yet live. In this respect, too, death and
intellect are related. Before men were obliged to wrestle with
intellect, a comparatively feeble sense of life was sufficient.
The men of olden times received their knowledge of the Divine
world in pictures, in revelations; inwardly they did not die. And
because the flow of life continued they could smile at death.
Even among the Greeks it was said: The agéd are blessed
because with the dulling of their senses they are unaware of the
approach of death. This was the last vestige of a view of the
world of which death formed no part.

We in modern times
have the faculty of intellect; but intellect makes us inwardly
cold, inwardly dead; it paralyses us. In the operations of the
intellect we are not alive in the real sense. Try to feel what
this means: when man is thinking he does not truly live; he pours
out his life into empty, intellectual forms and he needs a
strong, robust sense of life if these dead forms are to be
quickened to creative life in that region where moral impulses
spring from the force of pure thinking, and where in the
operations of pure thinking we understand the reality of freedom,
of free spiritual activity. In the book,
The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity,
I have tried to deal with this subject.
The book really amounts to a moral philosophy, indicating how
dead thoughts, when filled with life, may be led to their
resurrection as moral impulses. To this extent, such a philosophy
is essentially Christian.

I have tried in
this lecture to place before you certain aspects of esoteric
Christianity. In these days where there is so much controversy
with regard to the exoteric, historical aspect of Christianity,
it is more than ever necessary to point to the esoteric
teachings. I hope that these things will not lightly be passed
over, but studied with due realisation of their significance. In
speaking of such matters one is always aware of the difficulty of
clothing them in the abstract words of modern language. That is
why I have tried rather to awaken a feeling for these things, by
giving you pictures of inner processes in the life of human
beings, leading on to the esoteric significance of the Mystery of
Golgotha in the evolution of mankind as a whole.